SW Minn. braces for possible spring floods
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Leroy Harnack started a recent morning as he has so many other days this winter, using a snow blower to clear chest-high snow.
The drifts were four feet high on some parts of his neighbor's driveway near the small town of Revere. It's been at least a decade since the area's had snow this bad, Harnack said as he jammed a yardstick into deep snow.
"That shows 20 inches there," he said.
A new flood forecast due Friday is expected to confirm what many people in Minnesota's Red River Valley already know: there's a lot of snow out there, and with it, a big potential for flooding.
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There has been so much snow in southwest Minnesota that buildings have been damaged. Four-feet-deep snow on one of Harnack's buildings collapsed the roof, causing more than $120,000 in damage.
The same deep snow that collapsed Harnack's building and dozens of others will be melting soon. When it does, the trouble from the long winter could shift from high snow to high water.
"Depends on how fast the runoff is," Granite Falls Mayor Dave Smiglewski said. "If it gets warm real fast in late March or early April, there's going to be trouble."
The Minnesota River cuts right through the heart of Granite Falls. There were major floods there in 1997 and 2001. Because there's so much snow on the ground, Smiglewski said the city is preparing for more high water again this year. One area of concern is a residential area just south of downtown.
"We may end up placing sandbags there again," Smiglewski said. "And that would be certainly not what we want to do but we'll do what we have to do to protect the homes there."
The Minnesota River is still mostly frozen solid, but a little water flows over a dam in downtown Granite Falls. City officials hope the river remains low this spring, but they think the city is less vulnerable to flooding than in the past. After the 2001 flood, the city took steps to reduce flood damage, among them acquiring about 25 homes along Minnesota Avenue, City Manager Bill Lavin said.
Most of the homes along that flood prone avenue were demolished; a few were relocated. Granite Falls also built a flood wall downtown, and strengthened some permanent levees around the city. Montevideo, also on the Minnesota River, took the same sort of actions.
"There's certainly the potential for it to be a bad flood year," Montevideo City Manager Steven Jones said.
Jones said city staff is weighing how to prepare, including making sure Montevideo has enough sand bags to hold back high water. He said the biggest move the city has made since the 1997 and 2001 floods is to remove dozens of houses from a low lying area.
"At one time there was over 130 homes in Smith Addition," Jones said. "There's now only 20 homes left. The amount of people we have to get out in a bad flood situation [is] much less so it's a lot easier."
The amount of actual flood work the city will have this spring depends entirely on the weather, Jones said. His prescription for a trouble free spring thaw: lots of days with melting only during the afternoon, followed by nights with temperatures below the freezing point.
